Any educator is familiar with constructivism, a "big idea" at the core core of Piagetian theory. But to one of Jean Piaget's students who had a strong interest in technology, the ability to play with abstract ideas in a technology sandbox meant revisiting Piaget's central idea of a learner constructing knowledge interally. Now, thanks to new technologies, the ideas could come out of the head, put in a social setting, re-examined, and put back inside. These materials consited of simple programming languages (especially Logo), and other technologies like gears, robot kits, or Cricket kits that need to be debugged -- brought a new set of elements (Bers calls them "atoms and bits") to the mix.
PAPERT'S RESPONSE TO "DEFINE CONSTRUCTIVISM" (from Bers) "It would be perfectly oxymoronic to convey the idea of constructionism through a definition since, after all, constructionism boils down to demanding that everything be understood by being constructed." (Seymour Papert (1991, from page 13 of Blocks to Robots, by Marina Bers).
Yikes Seymour. Can't you just tell us what you mean?
Marina Bers, a student of Papert, writes "Constructionism is constructivist approach to making and evaluating materials that make use of technologies with the purpose of learning."
David Elkind's interpretation of constructionisum considers the work of Marshall McLuhan (1964). He writes the following in the forward of Ber's book: ...electronic media can give rise to new ways of thinking. [Papert] argues that with our new technology children can now create their own objects that integrate the mechanical with the electronic. These inventive constructions give rise to a new mode of thinking that Papert callse constructionism. That is to say when children build their own mechanical/electronic objects, they have created experience from whcih they learn new concepts of space, time, and causality.
My favorite part comes next:
Indeed, in this self created virtual world, space has become portable, time has become retrievable, and causality has become programmable. (from the forward of Blocks to Robots: Learning With Technology in the Early Childhood Classroom).
More from Bers (p. 15): Papert's constructivism is rooted in Piaget's constructivism, in which learning is best characterized as an individual cognitive process given a social and cultural context. (Hmmm -- is this form Papert or Vygotsky?). Bers continues "However, wereas Piaget's theory was developed to explain how knowledge is constructed in our heads, Papert pays particular attention to the role of constructions in the world as a support for those in the head. Thus, constructionism is both a theory of learning and a strategy for education.
How Constructivism Became Constructionism
Any educator is familiar with constructivism, a "big idea" at the core core of Piagetian theory. But to one of Jean Piaget's students who had a strong interest in technology, the ability to play with abstract ideas in a technology sandbox meant revisiting Piaget's central idea of a learner constructing knowledge interally. Now, thanks to new technologies, the ideas could come out of the head, put in a social setting, re-examined, and put back inside. These materials consited of simple programming languages (especially Logo), and other technologies like gears, robot kits, or Cricket kits that need to be debugged -- brought a new set of elements (Bers calls them "atoms and bits") to the mix.
PAPERT'S RESPONSE TO "DEFINE CONSTRUCTIVISM" (from Bers)
"It would be perfectly oxymoronic to convey the idea of constructionism through a definition since, after all, constructionism boils down to demanding that everything be understood by being constructed." (Seymour Papert (1991, from page 13 of Blocks to Robots, by Marina Bers).
Yikes Seymour. Can't you just tell us what you mean?
Marina Bers, a student of Papert, writes "Constructionism is constructivist approach to making and evaluating materials that make use of technologies with the purpose of learning."
David Elkind's interpretation of constructionisum considers the work of Marshall McLuhan (1964). He writes the following in the forward of Ber's book:
...electronic media can give rise to new ways of thinking. [Papert] argues that with our new technology children can now create their own objects that integrate the mechanical with the electronic. These inventive constructions give rise to a new mode of thinking that Papert callse constructionism. That is to say when children build their own mechanical/electronic objects, they have created experience from whcih they learn new concepts of space, time, and causality.
My favorite part comes next:
Indeed, in this self created virtual world, space has become portable, time has become retrievable, and causality has become programmable. (from the forward of Blocks to Robots: Learning With Technology in the Early Childhood Classroom).
More from Bers (p. 15):
Papert's constructivism is rooted in Piaget's constructivism, in which learning is best characterized as an individual cognitive process given a social and cultural context. (Hmmm -- is this form Papert or Vygotsky?). Bers continues "However, wereas Piaget's theory was developed to explain how knowledge is constructed in our heads, Papert pays particular attention to the role of constructions in the world as a support for those in the head. Thus, constructionism is both a theory of learning and a strategy for education.